and again the test comes back negative for waterborne parasites
for gonorrhea of the throat and of elsewhere for white blood cells in the stool
this isn’t always true sometimes it’s a phone call from your lover
sometimes it’s your computer blinking on with news of what’s wrong
with your body this time
simple really how he says the name of a disease
and suddenly you’re on your back staring out the window onto a highway
suddenly a woman enters the room to wrap a black cuff around your arm
and squeeze until you’re no longer sick
to slip a device under your tongue check in your sweat’s accompanied
by the heat it demanded
and aren’t we all of elsewhere sometimes the nowhere places you make yourself
inside the hallowed chambers of the hospital and inside the man’s unsure voice
when he calls and is too scared to name the precise strain of letters
you might share now what parasite might feed on the topsoil of your groin
what laugh track what tabernacle unlatched to let all that god in
what bacteria spreading its legs in your throat as you speak
when the illness is terminal you drink an eighth of paint thinner
while all the color drains from your face
all those little rocks in your gut turned to buses all those buses full of strange men
each one degree apart all going somewhere and gone now
funny how a word can do that garage the body
what if instead he’d simply called to say epithalamium or new car or sorry
From Bury It. Copyright © 2018 by sam sax. Published by Wesleyan University Press. Reprinted by permission.